hands, accompany the Furies in their exit.

Let us now take a retrospective view of the whole trilogy. In the
_Agamemnon_ we have a predominance of free-will both in the plan and
execution of the deed: the principal character is a great criminal, and
the piece ends with the revolting impressions produced by the sight of
triumphant tyranny and crime. I have already pointed out the allusions it
contains to a preceding destiny.

The deed committed in the _Choephorae_ is partly enjoined by Apollo
as the appointment of fate, and partly originates in natural motives:
Orestes' desire of avenging his father, and his brotherly love for the
oppressed Electra. It is only after the execution of the deed that the
struggle between the most sacred feelings becomes manifest, and here again
the sympathies of the spectators are excited without being fully appeased.

From its very commencement, the _Eumenides_ stands on the very summit
of tragical elevation: all the past is here, as it were, concentrated into
a focus. Orestes has become the mere passive instrument of fate; and free
agency is transferred to the more elevated sphere of the gods. Pallas is
properly the principal character. That opposition between the most sacred
relations, which often occurs in life as a problem not to be solved by
man, is here represented as a contention in the world of the gods.

And this brings me to the pregnant meaning of the whole. The ancient
mythology is in general _symbolical_, although not _allegorical_; for the
two are _certainly_ distinct. Allegory is the personification of an idea,
a poetic story invented solely with such a view; but that is symbolical
which, created by the imagination for other purposes, or possessing an
independent reality of its own, is at the same time easily susceptible of